About: blatcho

Stephen Shankland / CNET: Nvidia unveils its Omniverse Avatar Cloud Engine, a suite of cloud-native AI models and services for developers building 3D models of lifelike chatbot avatars  —  Stephen Shankland  —  What’s happening Why it matters  —  You’re probably used to interacting by voice with digital assistants like Alexa and Siri.

A soft rubber robot smaller than a postage stamp and controlled by electromagnetic forces can swim, jump and rotate – and could be used to deliver drugs or perform procedures inside a human body

It is a problem that has beguiled scientists for a century. But, buoyed by a $625,000 Distinguished Early Career Award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), Matteo Bucci, an associate professor in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), hopes to be close to an answer. Tackling the boiling crisis Whether you’re heating a […]

Most people in the United States have some degree of immune protection against Covid-19, either from vaccination, infection, or a combination of the two. But, just how much protection does any individual person have? MIT researchers have now developed an easy-to-use test that may be able to answer that question. Their test, which uses the […]

A conversation about approaching difficult choices differently.

Instead of either/or thinking, try both/and.

Seven strategies.

In this era of climate change and crisis, it’s time for formats as varied, animal, and leafy as the world they seek to represent.

The storied bike brand has outfitted its new cyclocross racing machine with a minimal 13-speed drivetrain from fellow Italian company Campagnolo.

WIRED’s editor in chief weighs the merits and detriments of carbon capture and storage, plus more thoughts on this month’s headlines.

Amy Thomson / Bloomberg: Micron plans to spend $40B by 2030 to expand US chip manufacturing capacity, aided by government grants and credits, and expects to begin production after 2025  —  Micron Technology Inc. said it will use “anticipated” government grants and credits to help it invest $40 billion by the end …

Reuters: South Korea’s telecoms regulator plans an investigation into Apple, Google, and One Store over suspected violations of the country’s in-app payment law  —  South Korea’s telecommunications regulator on Tuesday said it plans to launch an investigation into app store operators such as Apple Inc …

Sophie Fullerton / Washington Post: Influencers on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram are documenting trips to Syria, helping burnish the regime’s image, often sponsored by brands, such as Surfshark  —  Sophie Fullerton is a political scientist and human rights researcher based in New York.  —  Last November, around the same …

Not everyone who qualifies for health insurance signs up for it. Consider Medicaid, the national health insurance plan for low-income people. Across the U.S., about 14 percent of eligible adults and 7 percent of eligible children are not enrolled in Medicaid. As it happens, when adults do enroll in Medicaid, some of them sign up […]

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT has announced a significant expansion of its efforts to forge evidence-to-policy partnerships with innovative-minded governments seeking to use rigorous research to inform their social policies and programs.  These partnerships will support governments in laying the groundwork to take evidence-informed policies and programs to scale, aiming […]

Today the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) at MIT announced a new research project, supported by Community Jameel, to tackle one of the most urgent crises facing the planet: food insecurity. Approximately 276 million people worldwide are severely food insecure, and more than half a million face famine conditions.       […]

The popular Microsoft-owned code repository plans to roll out code signing, which will help beef up the security of open source projects.

The new Pretty Good Phone Privacy service for Android hides the data linking you to your mobile device.

Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man is a book about race metamorphosis—and the seduction of power.

Kate Park / TechCrunch: Crypto.com says it has secured registrations to operate as a virtual asset service provider in South Korea, acquires two local startups for undisclosed amounts  —  Singapore-based cryptocurrency platform Crypto.com has acquired two startups in South Korea — payment service provider PnLink …

Wall Street Journal: Despite YouTube suspending hundreds of Kremlin-linked channels, Russia has yet to ban the service, some argue because the Kremlin views it as too big to block  —  Access to the video site allows Russians access to one of the few sources of independent information about the Ukraine war

Chance Miller / 9to5Mac: iOS 16 beta 5 adds an option to show the battery percentage in the status bar on some iPhones, after Apple removed it for notched models at the iPhone X’s debut  —  The battery percentage has finally been added back to the status bar with today’s release of iOS 16 beta […]

An electrical device that can send and receive chemical signals from neurons could be used in brain-machine interfaces

A scientist at the Chernobyl nuclear plant says that Russian troops occupying the Zaporizhzya nuclear plant are risking its safety, with reports of shelling and mining of the site and explosives in the reactor building

Students in STEM fields are historically less likely to vote than those in other areas of study. Two nonpartisan MIT groups are working to change that, and early returns suggest they’re having an impact. This spring, the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) — an initiative of the Institute for Democracy and Higher […]

Lessons from the field of organization development.

Five traps to watch out for.

Investment in FemTech — diagnostic tools, products, and services related to women’s health — has exploded over the past decade. The Dobbs decision threatens its future.

In-body stabilization and thoughtfully designed controls make this workhorse a great choice for in-the-field photographers and filmmakers.

Batteries and renewable energy alone can’t decarbonize industries, and recent proposals for a “hydrogen economy” could bridge those gaps.

A Danish company that’s the sole producer of the only approved vaccine has sold nearly all its supplies to the US, and it won’t be making new doses until 2023.

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: Vista Equity Partners plans to acquire Seattle-based automated tax compliance software maker Avalara for $8.4B in an all-cash deal  —  Global investment giant Vista Equity Partners has announced plans to acquire automated tax compliance software provider Avalara, in an all-cash deal worth $8.4 billion.

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Filings: Apple spent $33M in fiscal 2021 and $169M in 2022 to date on acquisition payments, down from $1.5B in fiscal 2020, as its dealmaking slows dramatically  —  Apple Inc., which used to acquire a company every three or four weeks, has dramatically slowed its dealmaking in the past two years […]

Ashley Capoot / CNBC: Palantir reports Q2 revenue rose 26% YoY to $473M and customers rose 250% YoY to 119; stock drops 14%+ on weak Q3 guidance and uncertainty over government deals  —  – Palantir reported second-quarter results before the bell Monday that showed a greater loss per share than anticipated but beat analyst’s revenue […]

These titles let you play with friends on different platforms, whether it be computer, Xbox, PlayStation, Switch, or even mobile.

Help your guests connect to your network without typing a thing.

Abner Li / 9to5Google: Fitbit will end desktop syncing for PC and macOS in October, moving file transfers to its smartphone app, and local music and playlists to Deezer and Pandora  —  One way you synced the very first Fitbit devices was by connecting a dock to your desktop computer and plugging in the tracker.

Mark Harris / IEEE Spectrum: An examination of data collected by Tesla: what information its vehicles record, how Tesla uses this data to develop Autopilot, and who actually owns the data  —  Logs and records of its customers’ journeys fill out petabytes—and court case dockets  —  You won’t see a single Tesla cruising …

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: employees at many Apple stores continue to discuss unionization, Apple started to record September event; opinion: iPadOS delay was probably worth it  —  Apple made the right call to push back iPadOS 16, but the move could create new issues for users and developers.

These WIRED-tested slim slates let you take the world’s library anywhere.

New research finds that chaos plays a bigger role in population dynamics than decades of ecological data seemed to suggest.

Your gaming PC may have effectively unlimited power, but the portable alternative does not.

Zeyi Yang / MIT Technology Review: At least four top executives associated with a Chinese state-run semiconductor fund, which has invested $30B in total, have been arrested on corruption charges  —  The arrests of several top semiconductor fund executives could force the government to rethink how it invests in the sector.

Cecilia D’Anastasio / Bloomberg: Online crypto casinos like Stake are luring gamers, in some cases to the point of bankruptcy, by using celebrity endorsements and sponsored streams on Twitch  —  Enneric Chabot, 26, didn’t start gambling until he saw his favorite gamers doing it online.  —  Three years ago …

Todd Spangler / Variety: On its Q2 2022 earnings call, Warner Bros. Discovery announced plans to launch a combined HBO Max and Discovery+ streaming service in the US in summer 2023  —  The media company announced a timeline for the two services to be fused together: HBO Max and Discovery+ will launch in the U.S […]

Plus: Amazon buys iRobot, Clubhouse subdivides itself, and Instagram goes all-in on NFTs.

Plus: A crypto-heist extravaganza, a peek at an NSO spyware dashboard, and more.

Duo is being rebranded to Meet, but the old Meet will stick around for now. Still following?

Wall Street Journal: A look at Netflix scrambling to build an ad business and revive its subscriber growth; sources: Reed Hastings expects Netflix could charge ~$80 per 1,000 views  —  Reed Hastings insisted on focusing on subscriptions until competitors started nibbling away at his business model

Eric Seufert / @eric_seufert: [Thread] How Apple’s App Tracking Transparency blew up the digital ad ecosystem, bolstering Apple’s ads business while positioning it as a privacy champion  —  APPLE ROBBED THE MOB’S BANK: How Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy blew up the digital advertising ecosystem, bolstering its ads business while positioning itself as a […]